The rogue cultivator arrived three days later.
Longwei was hauling stones when he Heard screaming, distant at first then it spread through WILLOWREST like fire through dry grass. He dropped his equipments and limped toward the town center, ignoring the recovering muscles that had only begun to heal properly.
The main square was in chaos.
The villagers were fleeing in every direction and in their faces were primal terror, merchant's stall were being overturned with vegetables scattered across the dirt. A child was wailing separated from her mother and in the center of it all.
A man.
He stood nearly seven feet tall with his body covered in dark robes that seemed to stop the light, his face was gaunt, almost skeletal with dead eyes. Veins of black stretched up his neck and across his jaw like cracks on a wall.
Demonic cultivation, Longwei guessed with certainty. He's taken the parasitic path... draining others to feed himself.
The man's Qi signature was strong but twisted, pulsing with stolen life force. Foundation Establishment maybe peak stage, powerful enough to slaughter everyone in this town without breaking a sweat.
"WHERE IS SHE?" The rogue's voice was very deep, amplified by Qi until it rattled shutters. "THE ICE PHOENIX BITCH! I KNOW SHE'S HERE!"
ICE PHOENIX?
Longwei's gaze swept the square and found her immediately, the silver haired woman from three days ago, stood in the shadows of the inn's entrance. Her face was pale. Not with fear but...
She knew this man.
"You have one minute to deliver her," the rogue continued, yellow eyes scanning the cowering villagers. "After that I'll start killing, one person per minute until she shows herself." He gave wide smile. "I'm a patient man, I can do this all day."
No one moved, the villagers didn't know who he was looking for, they were just mortals caught in a cultivator's hunt.
Fifty-three seconds.
Longwei watched Mei's face, watched the planning happening behind those blue eyes. She was weighing different options, flee and let innocents die or reveal herself and face whatever this creature wanted.
He knew what she'd choose, anyone with honor would make the same call.
Forty Seconds.
Suddenly she stepped out of the shadow.
"I'm here."
The rogue's head turned toward her, that too wide smile stretching further. "Little Phoenix, you led me on quite a chase."
"Lin Heifeng." Her voice was calm despite everything going on. "You look worse than when I last saw you."
"Your sect's poison." The man, Lin Heifeng gestured at the black veins crawling across his skin. "It's eating me alive but don't worry I found a cure." He took a step toward her and ice grew across the ground at her feet. "Your cultivation, pure Yin essence, uncorrupted by the filth your elders use. If I drain you dry the poison neutralizes."
"You'll die anyway. The demonic path..."
"Is the only path your precious Jade Phoenix Palace left me!" His tensed up, rage bleeding through. "I was a servant! A companion! I did everything they asked, warmed their beds, satisfied their needs, let them use my Yang however they wanted and when I asked... No, begged... for real cultivation, a chance to be more than a decoration? They poisoned me and threw me out like garbage!"
Longwei saw Mei flinch a small then quickly suppressed it.
"You knew," Lin Heifeng continued, voice dropping to almost intimately. "You knew what they did to us... to me, you were suppose to different. You actually talked to me like a person and I thought..." A broken laughter. "I thought you might help but nope, you didn't, did you? You watched them drag me away and did nothing."
"I couldn't..."
"You wouldn't." He raised his hand, dark energy gathering like a storm. "Now you'll pay what you owe with your essence for my survival. Seems fair, don't you think?"
The attack came without further warning.
A dagger made of corrupted energy flew toward Mei fast enough that a mortal eye couldn't track it. She raised her hand and a wall of ice appeared crystalline and beautiful.
The dagger punched through it like it was paper.
Mei dove aside but the attack clipped her shoulder, spinning her into the dirt. She rolled up with frost gathering around her fingers and launched a counterattack with shards of ice that acted like blades.
Lin Heifeng walked through them, the corrupted Qi around him devoured the ice before it could touch his skin.
"You're weaker than I expected." He sounded almost disappointed. "The rumors said you were a genius, foundation Establishment peak before twenty but you're barely holding Core Formation stage one and your energy is..." He paused, head tilting. "Interesting... It's eating you from the inside, isn't it? Your own cultivation."
Mei's expression flickered, the first real crack in her composure.
"Oh, this is good." Lin Heifeng chuckled. "They did the same thing to you that they did to me, well, different method but same result, and you're dying too."
Dying?
Longwei was processing the information even as he moved. He didn't have a plan, didn't have Qi and didn't have weapons. Didn't have anything except a half healed body and stone hauling muscles but he was moving anyway, circling behind the demonic cultivator while Mei held his attention.
She's dying, her cultivation is killing her.
It explained the resonance he'd felt, the scripture mentioned that Yin-Yang imbalances created detectable disharmony. Mei's ice cultivation was pure Yin and without Yang to balance it, the cold would consume her from within.
She needs what I can offer, he realized. And I need what she has.
If we both survive the next five minutes.
Lin Heifeng launched another attack, this time a wave of corrupted Qi that warped the air itself. Mei blocked with another ice wall but this time the impact drove her backward, her eet skidding in the dirt. Blood dripping from her nose, her spiritual energy was depleting.
"Just give up," Lin Heifeng said gently. "I'll make it quick, quicker than what your cultivation will do to you. At least with me, you'll be useful and your death will mean something."
Mei's response was with a spear of ice that would have impaled a lesser cultivator. Lin Heifeng caught it with his bare hand, corrupted energy dissolving it and used the distraction to close the distance.
His hand wrapped around her throat.
"There we go." He lifted her off the ground, her feet dangling. "Now hold still, this will only hurt for a while."
Black energy began to flow with visible tendrils of corruption reaching from his hand toward her body, seeking her cultivation base and her Yin essence, her life.
Mei screamed.
Longwei hit Lin Heifeng with a stone.
It was a good stone too heavy with sharp edge, hauled from the Wang family's field. He swung it with every ounce of mortal strength he possessed, aiming for the base of the skull.
The impact was solid and satisfying but Completely ineffective.
Lin Heifeng's Qi automatically protected him. The stone shattered against an invisible barrier, and the demonic cultivator turned with an expression of mild annoyance.
"Who the fuck..."
Longwei hit him again, same result but this time Lin Heifeng was facing him, which meant he wasn't draining Mei.
She dropped to the ground, Gasping.
"Run," Longwei said to her. "I'll distract.."
Lin Heifeng's backhand caught him across the face.
The world started to turn with him airborne, then he wasn't, his body bouncing off the dirt like a discarded toy. Pain exploding through his recently healed ribs and something definitely cracked, probably Maybe several somethings.
"A mortal?" Lin Heifeng sounded genuinely confused. "A mortal attacked me?"
Longwei tried to rise, made it to his knees. Spat blood.
"Not... mortal." The words came out slurred, his jaw not working right. "Crippled... cultivator."
"Hmmm." Lin Heifeng walked toward him, leaving Mei temporarily forgotten on the ground behind him. "A fallen cultivator defending a Phoenix Palace disciple? Do you have any idea what that sect does to men? What they did to me?"
"Don't... care."
"You should." Lin Heifeng loomed over him, darkness gathering around his hand again. "But I suppose it doesn't matter, you'll be dead in a moment anyway."
The hand descended.
Ice erupted.
Not a wall this time but a spear, driven upward from the ground directly beneath Lin Heifeng. It punched through his foot, his calf and his thigh, emerging from his hip in a spray of blood and frost.
He screamed.
Mei was on her feet with both hands extended, her face filled with struggle. More ice formed encasing his legs, climbing his torso then spreading like crystalline cancer.
"You BITCH..."
"Shut up." Her voice was cold. Colder than her ice. "You want my Yin essence? Take it."
She poured power into the technique. The ice grew higher, faster, freezing Lin Heifeng's corrupted flesh wherever it touched. He thrashed, black energy flaring trying to corrupt the ice, to devour it like he'd devoured everything else.
But she was giving too much, faster than he could consume.
The ice reached his chest, then his shoulders, then his neck.
"Mei." Longwei forced himself upright, recognizing what he was seeing. "Mei, stop, you're killing yourself."
She didn't stop, her skin was turning blue, not from external cold but from the Yin energy she was expending. Frost formed on her eyelashes, her lips, her life force was draining visibly and feeding the technique.
Lin Heifeng's face was the last thing to freeze. His expression locked in eternal rage, eyes still burning yellow behind the crystal prison.
Then the ice cracked.
The frozen statue that had been Lin Heifeng fell apart with shards scattering across the village square, each piece containing a fragment of what was once a man. The corrupted Qi dissipated, unable to survive without a host.
He was dead.
So was Mei, if someone didn't intervene.
She swayed, skin blue-white, her breath coming in shallow gasps that froze in the air. Her eyes were unfocused, rolling back. The cold that had killed Lin Heifeng was now consuming its wielder.
Longwei caught her before she hit the ground.
She was freezing, not cold to the touch freezing, her body temperature were dropping by the second with ice forming on her skin wherever his warmth met her cold.
Pure Yin Excess, the scripture whispered in his mind. Without Yang to balance, the cold devours the host and eventually, the heart freezes too and Death follows.
He needed to warm her, but he knew a fire wouldn't reach the problem, the cold was in her cultivation base, her meridians, her core. She needed Yang energy directly applied.
He had no Yang energy to give, his core was shattered. He was as useless now as he'd been when Lin Heifeng swatted him aside.
No.
The thought came from somewhere deeper than desperation.
The scripture said the core can be rebuilt, It said Yin and Yang can flow between partners. It said..
"In moments of extreme need, even a damaged core can channel energy. The pathways remains, only the reservoir is destroyed. If an external source provides power..."
He'd read that passage last night a footnote, almost. A curiosity about edge cases in dual cultivation.
Now it was his only option.
"I need you to trust me," he said to the unconscious woman in his arms. "I know that's insane and you don't know me, I don't know you too but if I don't do this, you'll die."
No Response, She Was Beyond Hearing.
And Longwei made a decision and....
He pressed his lips to hers.